Chapter Seventeen
I stood on the edge of the curb outside the limo that had taken us from the day room to the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles for the American Music Awards. It was a flurry of activity. Cameras were flashing, people screaming, news personnel attempting to draw my attention away. Johnny waved his hands at them to back off as the other guys poured out of the limo behind me. Big beam spotlights searched the sky like in the old Hollywood pictures and Nick looked down at me with his sleeked back hair and faux glasses, looking all smart and stuff, and said, "Hot damn it's like the flippin' Taj Mahal yo!" I smiled beacuse no matter what they dressed Nick in he was still Nick.
But I'd be a liar if I said that I was prepared for the glitz of the moment. Everything seemed to shine and glow. Kevin led the way across the red carpet to the entrance of the Shrine and we stopped periodically for photo ops, once to answer a couple bland questions from an MTV veejay, once from People Magazine, and then for ABC, who was airing the whole affair.
It was beautiful, there was no way to deny that, but I felt so high strung. My heart was bothering me and had been since a little time after we'd landed and I wasn't sure why. I wasn't particularly stressed, and I hadn't done a ton of extra activity or anything. In fact, I'd slept most of the plane ride other than when I'd been talking to Nick, and when we got to the hotel, Kevin and I had both showered and taken a nap. Yet I'd had to take a couple aspirin before coming and it hadn't completely lessened the dull ache that I was feeling. I worried it would cause another episode like I'd had playing basket ball and my nerves were wearing on me. I kept my hands in my pockets and thanked the Lord that Nick was hyper enough to cover us both through interviews and meeting everyone that I needed to meet.
The whole ceremony was a bit of a blur of colors and noises that I was sifting through. The only moment I really clearly knew I would remember years later was the moment when we went onto the stage to announce the winner of the R&B/Soul artist or group of the year. We each took turns introducing a nominee - I did En Vogue - and we watched a short clip of the artists in question and I was excited when Kevin opened the little oragami envelope and we found out that Boyz II Men had won.
Boyz II Men had been one of my favorites in the past few years, and they sang one of the many songs that I frequently serenaded Leighanne with, so it was a real honor to get to announce their win. I made sure I got to shake their hands and give them hugs because I felt it was the least I could do to thank them for making music that inspired me. I figured that if their career lives were anything at all like mine, then they really needed to hear that every once in awhile, and I wanted them to know that I understood that.
We were whisked back to the airport following the ceremony, even though we had a bit of a wait before actual take off. I sat down by the terminal alone because the other four guys were hungry and I wasn't, and they'd gone to get food. I rubbed my hand across my chest, watching planes land and take off and roll across the tarmac outside the huge picture glass window I sat in front of. The noise of LAX surrounded me and I loosened my tie.
"You need to take your medicine," I heard a woman a few seats away say impatiently. I looked over and a little girl was seated in a wheel chair. On her lap was a small portable oxygen concentrator - the kind that's FAA approved. Anyone who hadn't noticed the cannula in her nose might've mistaken the POC for a purse. I watched as the mother argued with the little girl, clutching a small orange container of pills. The girl kept pushing her mother's hand away, twisting her head to escape, and her eyes landed on me.
Our eyes locked across the waiting area and she stopped struggling against her mom, who put the pills in her mouth, and the girl took them without fighting. Her eyes stared straight through me, almost seeming to ask a question or maybe to answer questions of my own. A tear rolled down her cheek.
I hesitated only slightly before standing up and walking over. "Hello," I said to her.
Her mother looked up, and her eyes widened in surprise as she recognized me. I lowered into the seat beside her, smiling at the girl, who reached out a hand for me, her other hand going to the cannula, as though ensuring it was still in place. She gasped out, "Hello."
I smiled and took her hand, kissed the back of it softly, and looked to her mother. "I saw your daughter looking," I said. "And I couldn't resist introducing myself to two such beautiful ladies. I'm Brian Littrell."
"Big fan," the mother stammered, "We are big fans." She stared at me, her eyes welling up.
I smiled. I spent the next few minutes sitting and talking to the girl and her mother and I learned that she was on her way home to a small town in Connecticut on a later flight than ours. They'd travelled to Los Angeles for a doctor's appointment - one that they'd hoped would help cure the girl's lung disease, but that hadn't worked quite the way they'd hoped. I held her hand as she struggled to make words, and I smiled and answered questions they had about the other fellas, and when they returned from dinner, they introduced themselves as well.
When it was time to get on the plane, I said good bye to them, giving the girl a quick kiss on her forehead, and hugging her mom. "Thank you," her mother gasped into my ear, "For making my daughter smile like this. She hasn't in so long."
"I am the one that should be thanking both of you," I replied. And I tore away, leaving them there and following Johnny, Lou, Nick, and the other guys onto the plane that was going to carry us back to New York.
We landed in Albany to another round of the typical show day routine. We traveled overnight in the bus back to New York City and got a hotel room, since we had two days in the city. At the hotel, Nick grabbed Lou, "Can I room with Brian again?" he asked. And Lou, though hesitant, allowed our rooming assignments to revert back to the old norm.
"What made you request me as your roomie again?" I asked Nick as we dropped our bags on the floor of the room. "Couldn't stand AJ anymore?" I teased.
Nick looked at me serious, "Well, you bought a ring," he said.
"Yeah?"
He shrugged, "She's coming on the next leg, right?"
I nodded.
Nick shrugged again. "So this might be the last time we room together," he said. And when he put it like that, it was incredibly sad.
I laid down on the bed and watched as he did his weird little routines. He set up his video games and dug in his suitcase for the clothes he wanted to wear the next day, which he left on the back of a chair. Then he crawled into bed and was silent a moment.
"I'm gonna be eighteen tomorrow," he said suddenly.
"That you are," I answered, nodding.
He looked over at me, "It's a really high-repressure age to be," he said.
"Why's that?" I asked.
"Because at eighteen you're like an adult but not really and people expect you to act like one but you aren't one at the same time. And because have you ever thought about how many songs there are about being eighteen? There's a ton!"
"Yeah there is," I agreed.
He fell asleep quickly and I was left in the dark to think. I glanced over at him. Nick, a grown up. The idea was baffling to me as I pictured him as I'd first seen him - a tiny lil pipsqueak of a kid with a shock of blonde hair and more energy than could be reckoned with. Now, he looked almost like an adult.
The next morning I woke up to the sound of him bumping around in the bathroom. He had the door open and I saw in the mirror opposite the door that he was standing in front of the sink, leaned far over. "Damn it," he muttered.
I rolled out of bed and went around the corner. Nick was attempting to shave. Shave what, I hadn't the faintest considering his face was smoother than a baby's bottom. I watched him for a moment as he knicked his chin and tried to plug the bleeding with his finger. "Need some help?" I asked him.
He turned around, "Yes that would be brilliant," he replied.
I turned back to the room and opened my duffle bag and pulled out the huge ziplock that held my shaving stuff. I returned a moment later with the kit, filled the sink with cold water, tossed in the razor, and squirted some of the oil onto his hands. "Here, rub this all over your chin."
Nick did as he was told.
I handed him the shaving cream. "Smear this on there, too, so it turns white." Nick followed instructions and I fished out the razor from the icy water. "Okay, now you pull the razor from your cheek downward in small little patches." I handed it to him.
Nick put the razor to his face, "Shit it's cold."
"It helps the blades run more smoothly on your face," I explained. Nick frowned and started to press the blades to his cheek. "Tighten your skin with your other hand, like this." I put my hands up on my face like I was about to shave, too. Nick copied me, and dragged the blade down, wiping away the cream. "And you can just swish the blade in the water to get that off there..." he did that, "And repeat the process."
I watched as Nick started working at the cream. There wasn't any hair to get off there but he got the cream off, working diligently like he had something to shave. It reminded me of when my father taught me how to shave, when I was thirteen. I stared at Nick and wondered why nobody had taught him before now. When he was finished, he grinned, barefaced, into the mirror, proud of himself.
"See, nothin' to it," I said, smiling.
Nick turned to me, "Thanks Bri."
"No problem," I replied.
A knock on our door made Nick bound out of the bathroom and I started picking up the mess he'd managed to make. I heard Kevin's voice and a moment later, Kevin was standing in the bathroom with us. "We've gotta get down town," he said.
"Notice anything different about me?" Nick asked, looking at Kevin and tilting his chin a bit.
Kevin stared at him for a long moment. He clearly did not see it. There wasn't anything to see so you can't blame him. I held up the razor behind Nick's back. "You shaved," Kevin said. "Nice."
Nick grinned.
We headed downtown and did a radio appearance, followed by stopping at MTV studios for Total Request Live, where Carson Daly and the crew had a birthday cake for Nick. The fans waved, holding Happy 18th Birthday signs up at him and Nick grinned and waved back. We waded through a sea of fans to get back to the tour bus and when we reached it Nick was laden with bags and presents and even had a party hat strapped to his head. He grinned like he was a pirate collecting loot and planted himself in the breakfast booth with his goods and unwrapped them all finding t-shirts and books and video games and candy he'd talked about in interviews over the last five years.
He got even more presents at the meet and greet, and when we got to the wardrobe afterwards he held up a post it note with a phone number. "That one lady stuck this in my pocket and whispered since I was legal now I should call her sometime," he bragged.
"Was that the lady with the walker?" AJ teased him.
Nick stuck his tongue out at him.
After the show, we took Nick out to dinner and the restaurant brought him a cake with long candles that sparked like those firecracker things little kids play with on the 4th of July, and Nick clapped his hands when he saw the cake and crowed with excitement when he found out it was chocolate-chocolate. Even Lou yelling at him to quiet down didn't dampen his excitement and he blew out the candles and sucked the frosting off the bottom of them happily.
Back at the hotel, Nick lay on his back in his bed upside down playing Frogger on his Nintendo system. "Did you have a good birthday?" I asked him as I swallowed my last couple aspirin for the night.
"Yeah," Nick nodded.
"Good." I got in bed and watched him play the game. It was impressive he could do it so well while hanging his head upside down over the side of the bed.
"My mom didn't call," he said after a couple moments of silence. He paused the game and sat up, his face red from having been overturned so long, his hair frizzy and disheveled. "I think she's still mad about the Johnny thing," he confessed.
"She shouldn't be," I said.
He frowned.
"Maybe you should call her."
"It's too late," Nick replied.
"Call her tomorrow."
"Yeah." He flopped back down and hung over the bed again and started the game back up and we fell into silence once more.
I felt bad for Nick because he had a weird life. He didn't have a bad enough family situation to really call himself abused but he also didn't really have a good one, either. It was kinda in between. I wondered what I would've felt like if my mother forgot to call me on my birthday. My mother hadn't missed a single birthday of mine ever. In fact, even the year I hadn't been home she'd still managed to call me at exactly my birth hour to tell me happy birthday.
I realized, watching Nick's pixelated frog jump from space to space on the screen that I'd taken that for granted all my life.
The next day was our free day and Nick sat on the end of his bed playing video games most of the morning. Around noon, I suggested we go to lunch and we got hot subs and coffees and wandered around New York City. We trolled around the record stores and rode the subway. We went back to the hotel, where Nick called his mother and I went to inspect the hotel swimming pool. That night, we met up with the other guys at dinner and was pleasantly surprised to find neither Lou nor Johnny were at the table and we were free to goof off and talk without them listening in. We talked about me and Kevin getting engaged and how AJ's mystery girl was getting to be too much and he thought he might break it off.
"You're quiet," Howie commented, looking at Nick, who had, indeed, been quiet during the entire meal.
Nick looked up from the broccoli he was avoiding eating on his plate. He looked at each of us in turn, then he took a deep breath, "My mother's mad at me," he replied.
"For what?" Howie asked.
Nick looked at me, then at AJ, and I realized he'd probably told AJ the whole story, too. "I just told her I wasn't getting along with Lou that's all," he said.
AJ was looking at me now, evidently making the same realization that I was, that we both knew what was going on. We did that thing where our eyes met over the table and we had a silent conversation.
"That's a stupid reason to be mad at you," Kevin replied.
Nick shrugged.
AJ suddenly jumped up from the table. "Gotta whiz!" he said a little too loudly. A woman behind him looked over, disgusted.
"Thanks for announcing it," Kevin replied, rolling his eyes.
"I'll go with you," I said, standing up too.
AJ nodded and we took off to the bathrooms, where he checked the stalls for other occupants, then locked the rest room to keep other people out, like we were in Fight Club or something. He looked at me. "You know," he said.
"Yeah, I know."
AJ started pacing. "Jesus, I'm so glad I ain't the only person he's told," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. He looked at me. "How bad do you think it is?"
"He told me nothing's really happened, it's just been suggested very strongly," I answered.
AJ looked relieved. "He told me by accident," he confessed.
"By accident?"
"Yeah," AJ said, "This one night we were doing pot..."
"What?!"
"...and he just out and said it and I was so freaked out it totally killed the buzz and I've been thinking about it since," AJ said, still pacing.
I stared at my feet. "You guys gotta stop with the drugs," I said flatly.
AJ paused in his pacing, "I told him not to get involved in the things that I do," he said seriously, "I told him I'm bad news."
"You shouldn't be doing it either," I said.
AJ's eyes were sad, "I don't have a choice."
"Of course you have a choice," I answered.
He shrugged, "It all hurts too much sober," he replied. He started pacing again.
"AJ --" I started, but he shook his head to stop me.
"We're here to talk about Nick, not me," he said.
"You aren't an island you know," I said quietly. "Like I told Nick, we're brothers first, not just bandmates. If you need to talk, I'm here for you, you know that?"
"Yeah I know," AJ answered. He sighed, "Who do we tell about this Nick and Lou thing?"
"I don't know," I said, "I wish I knew but I don't know."
There was a thumping and banging at the door and someone yelled in asking if anyone was in there, so AJ unlocked the door and we went back to the table to finish dinner. Kevin made a joke about us both having gone to the bathroom together, like girls, and Nick laughed. I looked around the table at each of my friends faces and wondered when we stopped noticing each other's pains.
Chapter End Notes:
The 1998 American Music Awards, BSB present Boyz II Men: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVaYgot6jiE
TRL on Nick's birthday, 1998: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNOf4eVOCI0
TRL on Nick's birthday, 1998: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNOf4eVOCI0
